Fifteen months
after she became first lady, Melania Trump remains a mystery, though she is coming out of the shadows and into the limelight more these days.
WASHINGTON — She is either complicit in her husband’s worst instincts or a victim of them, either struggling in an anachronistic job or confidently doing precisely what she wants to do with it. Fifteen months after she became first lady, Melania Trump remains a mystery.
In the span of several days ending Tuesday, Trump will have been thrust into a more visible public role than perhaps at any other time in her husband’s presidency. It comes after a lengthy period of relative invisibility that has not only confounded White House tradition but also limited her potential political benefit to a troubled administration.
After hosting the Japanese prime minister and his wife at Trump’s Mar-aLago compound in Florida last week, Melania Trump attended the Saturday funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush in Houston; the president stayed away. Before the service she smiled and chatted with former President Barack Obama, whom her husband has scorned for years, and, again smiling, joined in a formal photo with all of the former presidents and first ladies who attended the funeral.
Later that day, as her husband continued to rage on Twitter, she released a statement reiterating support for the Bush family, which has been antagonistic toward the president.
On Tuesday, Melania Trump will preside over the first state dinner of the Trump presidency, honoring the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte. The delay in hosting a state dinner, an event usually held in a president’s first year, had raised questions about Melania Trump’s view of the job.
The White House on Monday sought to underscore her role by releasing a video showing the first lady picking out dishes and linens and orchestrating a luxurious tableau. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders emphasized at the top of her daily briefing that Trump “has taken an active role in every detail and planning of the visit.”
It should be no surprise that Melania Trump’s tenure as first lady has been as unconventional as her husband’s presidency. She delayed her arrival in Washington for five months, so their son Barron could finish school in New York. Since coming to the capital, she has been buffeted by Trump’s controversies, most uncomfortably the multiple accusations of affairs.
She and Barron have been only sparingly seen compared to other first families.
“We still don’t know that much about her and it seems like she intends to keep it that way,” said Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women” and a second book about the inner workings of the White House.
In the absence of a fully developed image, Melania Trump’s actions have drawn outsize attention. In January, after allegations surfaced about Trump’s pre-presidential affairs, she canceled her participation in an overseas trip with her husband.
She traveled separately to the State of the Union address at the Capitol on Jan. 30, and marched into the House chamber wearing a white pantsuit, a style evocative of women’s suffrage and a totem of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The couple’s anniversary on Jan. 22 and then Valentine’s Day passed without any public recognition of their marriage.
Yet when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived at the Trump’s Florida home last week, the first couple strode hand-in-hand across the lawn to greet him.
That yin and yang was reminiscent of the 2016 campaign.
Melania Trump spurned the practice of modern political wives and barely campaigned for her husband. Yet when he needed it most — after the release of a video showing him bragging about assaulting women — she went on camera to defend him.
Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to Laura Bush, noted that Melania Trump, unlike most first ladies, did not come to the White House after a lifetime in politics. “Even the most experienced politicians … will find it very difficult at first to adjust to the security, adjust to the schedule,” McBride said.
Robert Watson, an American Studies professor at Florida’s Lynn University who has written about first ladies, said Melania Trump’s background should be a strength — she is an immigrant, now a U.S. citizen, who speaks several languages. But that, too, has been made problematic by her husband’s broadsides against immigrants and his desire to retreat from global cooperation.
“The first lady can be a secret weapon and … Melania could soften his image,” Watson said, but instead she has chosen to do “the absolute minimum necessary.”
It’s not clear if the week of activity will inspire a higher public profile or whether Melania Trump will return to the pace of her first year in office.
“I think what we see now is what to expect the remainder of his time in office,” said Ohio University historian Katherine Jellison. “We’re going to see a woman who does not want to be involved politically much, and sometimes does not want to be in the fishbowl at all.”